The Zombie Road Omnibus

by David A. Simpson

  “Ok,” Jessie said. “Be careful, don’t let them see you.”

  He crouched down and ran back up the aisle toward the storage area and the tiny manager’s office that wasn’t much bigger than the desk and time lock safe that was stuffed in it. As he was stepping over the woman, he heard the sound of the front door being pushed open and the roar of one of the undead. He turned to see Doug’s shocked face standing behind the counter, reaching for some keys dangling from a hook on a shelf over his head. One of the things running for the back of the building had seen him. What was he thinking! Now all of them changed course and were aiming for the open door. Jessie brought his gun up and started firing, sending round after round into rotting bodies spilling through the entrance, but it was no good. Not one of them fell. Doug ran for the nearest safe spot he saw, the corridor that had the two bathrooms, and the bullet-riddled front runner turned to chase after him. Jessie sprinted for the manager’s office and slammed the door behind him. He heard them stumble over the woman on the floor and crash into glass cases and shelves, sending chips and bottles tumbling. He flipped the lock and pushed the desk against it. They would still be able to get in. The door was cheap wood. The lock was junk. He heard the first of them slam into it and then a few more. There was nothing else to use to jam against it. He still had the gun in his hand and looked down at it. The slide was locked back. He was out of bullets. He closed his eyes and gave a short laugh. He couldn’t even end his life.

  He looked up. Drop tile ceiling. Maybe. Just maybe he could hide up there. When they busted in and didn’t find him, maybe they would forget and wander off. Maybe.

  He climbed up on the desk and pushed aside the acoustic tile that was nearest to the wall. He poked his head through and saw the hidden workings of the building. The air ducts, the wiring and plumbing lines. The block wall he was standing next to didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling. It was only a few inches higher than the drop ceiling, and only eight inches wide. The width of one concrete block. Good enough. He shimmied up and balanced precariously on top as he slid the tile back in place, dropping it back in the aluminum track. It was dim up here, but he could see well enough. The drop ceiling only ran over the actual store and office areas. The storage room in the back and the tops of the long banks of coolers were open. Any zombie wandering back there for any reason could look up and see him. He crawled along gingerly on the top of the wall toward the coolers. At least there he wouldn’t have to worry about constantly maintaining his balance. Below him they were still screaming and pounding on the door. He could hear them on the other side of the store roaring in rage, too. That meant Doug had managed to hide away in the bathroom. He looked that way but the concrete walls went all the way to the roof. If they had drop ceilings, there was no way for him to go anywhere except right above the room. “They probably built it like that so creepy peeping toms couldn’t stare in through the ceiling,” Jessie thought. “Bunch of sickos.”

  He made it to the top of one of the refrigerated cases and as quietly as he could, stretched out and lay still. They wouldn’t be able to see him now. With some luck, they would meander back out the way they came in. But he doubted it. He’d been in this situation before, waiting for days for something to draw them away. It wasn’t going to happen. He heard the splintering of wood and their keening got a little more excited at the manager’s office. It died down after a few minutes, though. He smiled grimly.

  “Ha-ha, you smelly bastards. No dinner for you tonight,” he thought.

  He heard them make their way over toward the others, still pounding on the bathroom door. Jessie hoped it was made of better material than the one on the office. He had cuts and scrapes all over and he didn’t even know how he got them. He closed his eyes, feeling drained. The adrenaline had fled his system, leaving him weak and shaky. He needed to rest for a minute or two. There was nothing else he could do. Somehow, even with the constant hammering of the undead trying to get at Doug and their otherworldly keening, he drifted off to sleep.

  He awoke with a start. He didn’t know how much time had passed. A minute? An hour? He still felt exhausted, but the cries of the zombies had stopped. He could still hear them stumbling around in the store. They weren’t screaming and pounding on the bathroom door anymore. Doug must have joined their ranks. The door must have finally been broken down. His mind was a little clearer now and he started trying to figure a way out of this mess. He couldn’t go down. He didn’t have any weapons and those things would be bumping around the store forever. Even if he could kill the twenty or thirty inside, there had been hundreds outside and they would all pile in if he got them all riled up.

  The roof. He had to get up there somehow. He raised his head enough to look around in the fading light. It was getting close to dark, he must have nodded off for a couple of hours. The horror of what had happened had just shut him down. His mind didn’t want to hear Doug torn to pieces, so it did the only thing it could. It let him sleep.

  He saw it then, once he knew what to look for, in the back corner of the store. A metal ladder bolted to the wall going up to the roof. Maintenance access. With no way to get to it. It was probably fifteen feet between the top of the cooler and the back wall. He looked closer, searching for anything he could use. A stack of empty soda crates, a shelf of cleaning supplies, piles of old magazines, anything. There was nothing. He looked up. There was the answer staring him in the face all along. The metal trusses that supported the roof went the entire width of the store and within a few feet of the ladder.

  He took a careful look over the edge. None of the monsters were close at the moment, so he reached over and pulled the back door of the cooler open. The smell of rotting meat wafted up and he grimaced. He would pick the cooler that had the sandwiches in it. He leaned over and grabbed a couple of cans of whatever was on the top shelf and quickly closed the door. Some kind of tea he’d never heard of. It didn’t matter. Going after stuff he didn’t need, but thought he did, had gotten all of his friends killed. Him, too, probably. It was wet, that’s all that mattered. He stuffed them into his pockets then sat up and grabbed the metal truss. Now or never. He pulled his feet up and went hand over hand to the ladder. One of them noticed the movement, or the noise, and their screams started up again. They rushed toward the back room as his Vans found the rungs and he hurried up to the hatch. He hit the emergency release bar, similar to the one on the back door, warning him of an alarm that would never sound. He scuttled through the opening and slammed it shut behind him, only at the very last second considering it might lock and he’d have no way back in.

  It did. He pulled at it in a futile effort. Solid steel plate door with heavy duty latches. He wasn’t going to get it back open without a blowtorch. Or at least the crowbars. He ran to the edge of the roof. If there was a fire escape out here, maybe he could get down and get away. There wasn’t. Just hundreds of undead completely surrounding the Kwik Mart. He jogged down to the other end, past the air conditioning units, past the openings leading down into other shops and all the way to the last store. There were no ladders down. No convenient semi-truck parked at a loading dock. No cloth awnings he could jump to. Just a twenty-foot drop to asphalt.

  He lay down on the roof in the shade of one of the air conditioner units and thought about the past few hours, the pebbly gravel not even bothering him. They had been so stupid. What had they been thinking? He closed his eyes, but the tears wouldn’t come.

  23

  Jessie

  Jessie spent the night on the roof nodding off, then waking up with a start. He didn’t even have to check to know they were still there, just plodding around and wandering in aimless little circles.

  Around one in the morning, he heard a faint voice drifting on the night air. The zombies were bumping around and shuffling their feet, but weren’t keening or screaming for blood. Someone was talking.

  He got up and followed the sound over to the edge of the roof at the back of the Kwik Mart. The car radio was on. His
old man had wired it so he could listen to music with the key off if he were working on it or washing it. It was low, but he could hear it plain as day. It was his dad. He was still alive. He was leading a band of people to someplace in Oklahoma. The power plants were going to all melt down and the zombies would follow you forever. It repeated every few minutes, all night long. He found comfort in his father’s voice, if not his words.

  “They’ll follow you forever,” he thought to himself. “They never give up. Even when you think you’re clear, they will still keep coming. They had heard the car. They knew exactly where we were. They never give up. Why, oh why hadn’t they thought to try to listen to the radio before? Doug and Sheila and Gary would still be alive.”

  It was nearly dawn. Every time he fell asleep then woke up suddenly, he remembered all over again the idiot mistakes they had made. He was tired and tired of beating himself up about it. He was back in the same situation he’d been in a week ago. He had a choice. Live or die. If he wanted to die, then he needed to go throw himself off the roof and be done with it. If he wanted to live, he needed to figure out a way to get to Lakota. He had no idea where any power plants were, but if it was safe in Oklahoma, that’s where he needed to be. It had been weeks, he supposed if they were going to blow, they already would have. He was still alive, hadn’t turned into a mutant, so he guessed he was safe.

  “So, what’s it gonna be, Jester? Jump off the roof and get eaten, or outsmart those stank nasty stinkers.” He smiled inwardly at the memory. His dad used to call him that if he heard him break wind. Half the time he would act like he was choking to death from the smell and yell for a medic.

  He decided he had things to do. He could put off dying for another day.

  He took inventory of everything he had. One empty 9-millimeter pistol, two cans of hippy green tea and the clothes on his back. He made another circuit of the building, looking for any way down, but there was none. He tried every access hatch, they were all firmly locked from the inside. He stomped his foot on the rubberized and gravel-covered roof. It was solid. If he had one of the hammers out of the car…

  “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” his mom used to say.

  “Wish in one hand and then crap in the other. See which one gets filled up first,” was how his dad put it. He was a little more blunt.

  He took a closer look at the big air conditioning units. They were basically giant tin boxes covering the radiators and fans and whatever else blew cold air into the stores. They went through the roof. There might be a way in, if he could get them apart.

  He dropped the magazine out of his gun and used the lip on it to turn the screws on the flimsy cover. Once he managed to get it loose and shoved aside, the rest of the unit came apart fairly quickly. Every time he managed to get a piece off, he had one more tool to work with. A strut turned into a pry bar. A blower motor became a sledgehammer. An oversized condenser became a deadly flying projectile after he sliced his hand on it. He sent it flying over the edge of the roof, using an inventive string of curse words that would have gotten him grounded for a month.

  He finally managed to get enough ductwork and mechanical components out of the way so he could slip through. It was empty inside and he dropped down onto an exercise mat. He found himself inside the Southern Atlanta Traumatic Injury Rehabilitation Center. The windows along the front of the building were heavily tinted and he could see the masses still milling around, but they didn’t notice him. He carefully went over to try the door, just to be sure.

  Locked.

  He checked the rest of the facility out, making sure there were no unlocked doors in the back, or a zombie in the bathroom. It was a big place. It took up half the strip mall by itself and had all kinds of exercise equipment and mats. In one corner, Jessie could see the mechanical legs that Gary wanted to get. He stared at them, not seeing. Not remembering. The empty feeling was threatening to roll over him in a black wave again. He closed his eyes and did a trick his dad had taught him. He called it closing your Chakras, Jessie called it counting to 10 before you lost your temper. It worked, either way. He ran an open hand down his body, starting at his head and slowly moved it lower, shutting off feelings as he went. When he opened his eyes again, he just saw a cool looking set of Robocop legs. The label on them said Rex Bionics. Wasn’t that an old TV show he’d seen on one of the rerun channels? The Million Dollar Man or something like that? There were other prosthetics in their racks, all kinds of different arms and legs. Probably donated by various companies so people could try them out, maybe buy them.

  Jessie went back to the snack rack, grabbed a power bar and mango drink then went into the office. He would have to wait it out. Wait until something drew all those things away. It could be worse. The couch looked comfortable and there were tons of healthy looking food and drinks.

  24

  Day 14

  “The town is clear, Sir,” Gunny said again, starting to get annoyed with the General. He was standing outside of Cadillac Jack’s truck, making his usual 10 o’clock call to Cheyenne Mountain. He still hadn’t wrapped his head around the idea that he was supposed to be the general’s boss.

  “There’s at least a hundred and fifty people here, they can hold for a week while we’re gone after my family. Besides, I told you we found a Councilman a few days ago in Crow City, and a Mayor here. One of them can take over, you don’t need me anymore.”

  They were both being stubborn, two mules butting heads. The General had explained, more than once, that he couldn’t just change Presidents like he was changing his shoes. If they had found the Mayor last week, then of course he would have been asked to fill the role. But he wasn’t. Gunny was. And he couldn’t just quit and give the job to somebody else. He would have to either resign officially and through the right channels, or he would have to wait until he was voted out next year.

  “Fine. I resign, then,” Gunny had said.

  “You can’t,” the General had replied. “Now that we have a working government, we need Congress to approve. We don’t have a Congress yet.”

  “I hate government,” Gunny had fumed, and stomped off as he handed the mic to Cobb.

  Griz and Collins could barely hide their grins, relieved that the faint-hearted Mayor of this burg wasn’t going to be in charge of anything more important than supply inventory. The councilman from Kansas wasn’t much better. He was arrogant and bossy, but at least he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.

  They had finally come to a compromise after the General had described the satellite image of the two people on the porch for the third time. It sure sounded like he was describing Lacy and Jessie. The multi-colored jacket they had picked up at the Flea Market. Her blonde hair in a ponytail. Jessie’s unfashionably long blondish hair and that black hoodie he wore until it started smelling and Lacy made him wash it. There had been no more pictures of them outside on the daily passes, but the house was still secure and there was only a small crowd of the undead milling around. They were safe. He supposed he could wait a few more days and help get security set up.

  Shakey had made it to the coast with his load of plutonium rods. The satellite had tracked him with every pass. There were scores of modified trucks already there, and a lot more getting close. Their initial guesses were right. The trucks were being offloaded to a boat and it was ferrying the casks out to a ship anchored in deep water. It was easy to keep track of the progress, now that they had a specific location to target.

  The next morning, Griz unhooked his Kenworth from the lowboy since nobody else knew how to drive the three stick transmission. Then one of the other drivers used his own truck to pull it into town for the cleanup crew. He and Gunny borrowed the pickup truck from the Crow City Councilman, loaded the boys in the back for security, then headed out to scout the town’s perimeters and try to figure out the quickest way to erect some fencing or barriers.

  The town was laid out adjoining the lake. It was high above the water and the shoreline was very steep
where it was close to the dam. They considered it unclimbable for nearly a half mile, until the natural terrain started gently sloping and made access easy. The main road that crossed over the dam would be easy enough to seal off with a few trailers blocking it. The rest of the area, however, was a problem. They could string barb wire pretty quick, but it would only slow the undead down. They would need a serious number of guards posted 24/7 to keep it safe. The whole town would have to rotate in three shifts. Even then, if a crowd of a few thousand happened in from Dallas or somewhere, they’d be overrun.

  Scratch banged on the roof of the truck to get Gunny’s attention. “What’s that?” he asked. “Are those train tracks?”

  Gunny looked out of the window, across the plain, to see where he was pointing then headed in that direction.

  It was train tracks. They were running straight as an arrow, heading down into Dallas and points beyond. They went along the outskirts of town, and then paralleled the highway across the dam before branching away from it to run due north.

  “Doesn’t help us much, unless you’re thinking of laying track all the way around the town and parking a train on it,” Griz said.

  “What if we ran into the next town with a freight yard and snagged a trainload of containers,” Scratch asked. “We could get an intermodal forklift on your lowboy,” he indicated to Griz with his spike. “We could put them in a line, make a big circle around the town. Plus, we’d have whatever was inside them.”

  Gunny was nodding as he listened. He’d pulled containers for a little while, he was familiar with the process and those trains carried a few hundred boxes on them. “I wonder how many we’d need to circle this place? It’d probably take a mile of them if we wanted to leave some room for a killing field, just in case they were breached.”